


Dreams and Songs to Sing

by EmHunter



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Alternate Universe - Victorian, Anal Sex, Anglo-Irish Relations, Angry Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Child Death, Enemies to Lovers, Hate Sex, Historical References, Irish history, Lilia is absolutely nasty and evil, Love/Hate, M/M, Minor Injuries, Minor Violence, Original Character Death(s), Past Character Death, Poisoning, Rough Sex, Sad with a Happy Ending, Threats of Violence, all dying happens in the past, mention of murder in the past, mention of starvation in a historical context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:15:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 20,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24032623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmHunter/pseuds/EmHunter
Summary: On one and the same eventful day, Lord Victor Nikiforov lost his heart and almost his life.
Relationships: Christophe Giacometti/Original Female Character(s), Katsuki Yuuri/Victor Nikiforov
Comments: 52
Kudos: 109
Collections: YOI REGENCY WEEK





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theangryuniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theangryuniverse/gifts).



> I have tried to stay as historically correct as possible, but as I don't write Omegaverse, I have had to bend reality a little bit to make this story work:
> 
> In this version of Victorian London, men are allowed to marry men. 
> 
> The song Yuuri performs does deal with the times of the Irish potato famine, however, it would not have been around at that time yet as it was written more than 200 years later. There are a million versions of it but I find these two particularly beautiful and fitting to enhance this story: [performed by young men](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8GYnSt6uro) and [this haunting version with a harp, although performed by a woman](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iX01J9nsHs).
> 
>  _Nabucco_ was performed in London in 1846, I stage a re-run here about four years later.
> 
> This was written for YOI Regency Week 2020 and the prompt Mysterious Suitor/Music.
> 
> A HUGE thank you goes to Alex (Brownie) for helping with her tremendous knowledge of historical facts and answering so many of my questions. 💗 All inaccuracies and fuck ups are completely my own! Thank you also to Franzi for kicking my butt and the constant encouragement, without which this story might never have seen the light of day. Baby Giacometti is all yours! ❤️

**Prologue**

The grass was dancing to the tune of the wind. Lonely sheep clouds trawled here and there across a vast light blue sky. Sunlight kissed the countless shades of green as far as the eye could see, licking up every trace of the downpour that had washed the land clean not too long ago.

A young man’s laughter rang out across the fields as he leapt over a low wall and ran faster, lured by the promises made by sea blue eyes peeking out at him from behind a thin tree trunk that was more an excuse than a hiding place. The wind was whipping his hair into his face, thick black tresses coming down below the frayed collar of his shirt and falling into his face. They stung his eyes if he didn’t push them away quickly enough. He never did.

Ahead of him a large rectangular tower loomed, and he slowed down, smirking, stepping closer in lazy strides because this barrier was far too strong for his prey to escape. His hand caught the hem of rough cotton and a lithe body turned around in his embrace under softest laughter, knocking a little air out of his lungs as he broke their fall, landing on his back in the soft wet grass.

The air was cooler in the shadows of the castle walls. He rolled them over so that he came to lay on top, breathing faster as he looked down at the bright blue eyes that held his whole world in them. He saw his own brown eyes reflected in them, a mirror of love that had been eternal already before it began. For such were the legends of their land. Such was the run of the rivers. Such were the songs of their soul.

Freckles dotted the sweetest pale face, and he kissed every single one of them now. He kissed the heart-shaped mouth, dark hair falling into his face as he bent down his head.

The young man’s cheeks were tinged with pink from running, and from the wind lashing at his face, and from the bliss of holding his greatest happiness in his arms.

This was his land.

His love.

His life.

* * * * * * * 

**Chapter 1**

On one and the same eventful day, Lord Victor Nikiforov lost his heart and almost his life.

It was the early hours of the morning as he was making his way home on foot through the foggy, deserted streets of London. His manservant kept close by his side, looking anxiously around them again and again.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to find a carriage, Sir?” he asked, not for the first time.

“Georgi.” Victor smiled. “My head is spinning from spending the whole night in that smoke and opium filled gambling hall. A little fresh air to clear it will do me good. It is only a couple of streets.”

Georgi bowed his head in acceptance, though he did look exceedingly unhappy and wary.

The attack was swift and unexpected. As he was passing a narrow passage between two houses, merely two streets away from home, a dark figure came pouncing from the shadow and threw him on the ground. It was only owing to the fast reaction of Georgi that the arm Victor saw raised above him with a weapon he was unable to make out in the dim light of dawn was kicked aside and the man pulled off of him. The attacker ran as quickly as he had come, seeing his plan had failed.

Georgi took pursuit but came back soon enough, clearly not wanting to leave Victor for long in case there was still danger lurking. Victor had risen from the pavement in the meantime and started to swipe the dirt from his suit and coat, glad he was wearing gloves. Georgi would need to burn them as soon as they arrived home.

“There were two of them,” Georgi reported, trying to catch his breath, bent over with his hands on his knees. “They exchanged but a few words, but if my ears did not deceive me, they were speaking some kind of Gaelic? Why would anyone try to kill you, milord?”

Victor shook silver strands of hair from his face and put on a nonchalant smile.

“Georgi. I carry a purse well filled with gambling winnings on me. Quite possibly they followed us since we stepped out of the door. You do know that criminals lurk outside the gambling rooms, waiting to relieve anyone who comes out of their purse in case it contains money they won.”

Georgi frowned like he wanted to disagree, but he remained silent.

They walked on, until Victor paused in his steps just as they were about to round the corner to their street.

“Georgi!”

His manservant looked up at the very solemn address.

“Not a word of this to my mother or Yakov! Is that understood?”

“But Sir—” he started but Victor cut him off immediately.

“Not! A word! I do not wish to worry them. They scold me enough for my visits to these places in the first place. Like a grown man cannot have a bit of fun at the card tables once in a while. Besides, what would they say to you if you had to own up to failing so spectacularly at your duty?”

Georgi blushed and lowered his eyes to the ground. Victor despised himself for having to do this to him, but it would be worth it for everyone’s peace of mind. Neither of them needed his mother’s nor Yakov’s wrath.

“But Sir,” Georgi started again, and Victor sighed.

“What if this _was_ an attack on your life?”

“It was not. It was merely an attack on my purse.”

Victor laughed it off like he patted and swept more of the street dirt from his clothing before they entered the house, hoping Georgi wouldn’t notice how shaken he felt. Or that the attacker had never made the slightest attempt to even get at his purse.

They made their way upstairs in silence and entered Victor’s rooms on the first floor.

“Would you like me to draw up a bath, Sir?” Georgi asked, taking the gloves from Victor and waiting patiently while Victor undressed.

“There is no need.” Victor hid a yawn behind one hand. “I merely want to sleep now. Get rid of all these.”

He placed all his clothes except for his shirt into Georgi’s hands. “I want nothing to remind me of this morning.”

Dressed in nothing but his shirt he walked over to a cabinet on which a wash bowl sat next to a bar of soap and a cloth and a towel. He poured some water from a porcelain jug and washed his hands and his face before he dismissed Georgi. Physically and mentally exhausted, Victor stepped into his bedroom and closed the door on this terrible morning and the world.

His mother’s voice woke him what felt only minutes later, cutting like whiplash across his dressing room. The door to his bedchamber flew open and he sat up in bed, the blanket pulled up to his chest, peeking through half-opened eyes and messy silver strands of hair at the tall, wiry woman who took position at the foot of his bed.

“Good morning, Mama,” he said, stressing the word on the second syllable.

“It is almost noon, Vitya! You have already wasted the morning away!” His mother’s voice was crisp and harsh like the November morning. “What is this I hear about you being attacked in the street?”

“Georgi…” Sighing, Victor looked past her at the man twitching nervously from one foot to the other in the doorway.

“Please forgive me, Sir. I had no choice,” his manservant muttered.

“I made him tell. One of the maidservants saw you creep in in the morning.” The sharp voice of the Baroness cut through the room. “What were you thinking wandering the streets all by yourself?”

“I was not wandering, Mama, I was merely going home.”

“On foot!”

“A little exercise has never killed a man,” Victor murmured.

“It nearly had _you_ killed!”

Victor winced. Every word felt like a gun shot tearing through the peaceful silence that was usually his bedroom.

“Georgi tells me he heard someone talk in Irish. Is this true, Vitya?”

“He said Gaelic to me.” Victor frowned at the man by the door. Georgi lowered his eyes.

“We have no connection to Scotland whatsoever. It must have been Irish,” the Baroness insisted.

“I could not tell you, Mama, I did not hear them myself.”

“Did you see them?”

“No, Mama.”

“Were you drunk?”

“No, Mama! I was merely very tired after being up all night, and it was a narrow street and not yet daylight. Can I please go back to sleep? Nothing happened. I am quite well. They were simply after my purse.”

She watched him closely from the foot of the bed, with that sharp gaze that always reminded him of a bird of prey. At long last she took a deep, resigned breath.

“This arrived for you this morning.”

He saw the small package in her hands only now, just before she threw it towards him. It landed on the bed, just within reach if he stretched a little bit.

“Your mysterious suitor is quite an avid letter writer. I hope whatever gift is included this time is worth our family’s standard.”

“Mama…” Victor exhaled with a pleading smile. He had not found any suitor as entertaining as this one for the longest time, and surely hoped she would not scare this one off. At least not before Victor had had a chance to meet them in person.

“I expect you up and down in the salon for lunch within the hour, Vitya. If you can play cards all night, you can have lunch with your mother!”

She turned on her heel and stalked from the room. Georgi knew better than to address Victor now. He quietly closed the door from the outside.

Victor reached for the parcel his mother had dropped on the bed. A delicate scent was coming from it and he brought it close to his face for a moment to breathe it in. Sturdy wrapping paper was tied with cream-coloured string, loose enough for Victor to slide it over the corners without having to cut it. A letter fell into his hands and he placed it gently beside him on the bed. The scent was stronger now, fresh and clean, like a summer meadow washed clean by rain, and he lifted the oval wrapped carefully in softly rustling tissue paper into the palm of his hand. As he folded the paper to the side, he started laughing. What a gift to receive from a suitor! The imprint in the soap was from none of the shops he usually purchased his soaps from.

The letter that came with the gift was the usual clumsy attempt at composing a love letter. Victor read it lying back against his pillows, a wide heart-shaped smile on his face. Once he was finished, he folded the letter back up and wrapped the soap back in its tissue paper. A yawn stretched his face as he placed them both in the drawer of his bedside table.

His mother’s summon to lunch quite forgotten, Victor crawled under the blankets and went back to sleep.

* * * * * * * 

A few hours later found Victor in his gentlemen’s club where he was to meet his friend for afternoon tea.

He was early, but he had wanted to leave the house while his mother was out on her calls. He was in no mood to face her after sleeping through the lunch she had been adamant he joined her for.

Victor had chosen a spot in the smaller tea salon. Heavy carpets and dark wooden panelling and furniture only made the room seem to shrink further in size, but at least the smoking was cut down in here thanks to the proportion of the room. Nevertheless, Victor crinkled his nose at the various grey puffs wafting between tables. They made his head heavy. He was reading the daily paper, frowning repeatedly behind it for with the commentary of the two men seated at the table next to his, he might as well have saved himself the effort. Not only were they reading out articles at each other, they were also not shy about commenting on them.

“Would you believe it?” A booming deep voice asked. “They are still looking for this one.”

“The thief? You would think they would have him by now, god knows they get all the financial aid they ask for!” The other voice was rather high-pitched for a man, and vile. Victor remembered the unpleasant encounters with its owner, and his frown deepened.

Silence and paper rustling followed, sadly not for very long. Victor rolled his eyes behind his paper.

“Ah, look at that, when will they ever stop complaining?” The booming voice.

The familiar rustle indicated that one of the men was shaking his newspaper for good measure.

“The famine has been long over and still those apes complain about not having enough food to eat.”

“Complaining is one of their natural trades, methinks. They call it poetry,” the vile one said. Both men laughed.

“They would not know poetry if it bit them in the nose,” the booming voice declared.

“For sure they put enough food aside that was rightfully ours and pretend that they are still starving,” the vile one said. “The devils are tricking us. Especially our women, waylaying them in parks and begging, telling sad stories. My wife frequently believes them, but then we all know women are weak.”

Victor lowered his paper and caught the man’s stare across their tables. It made his skin crawl.

Picking up on the break in conversation, the owner of the booming voice also lowered his paper. Victor nodded a greeting, having encountered him frequently at societal events throughout the season.

“How are _you_ dealing with the Irish, Nikiforov?” the man asked now. “You have estates there.”

“I treat them like human beings," Victor replied crisply and folded his paper with vigour.

His face seemed expressive enough for them to notice that he would prefer not to be in their company, for the vile one assembled his paper and rose from his seat, claiming he would very much like to enjoy a cigar in peace and catch up with an acquaintance. The look he gave his companion as he said the words was enough to make the other man fold up his newspaper too and take a look at his pocket watch, only to announce he was just about able to make it home in time for tea.

Victor was only too glad to see them go.

“Ah, here comes Giacometti,” he heard the vile one say from the doorway on his way out.

Christophe Giacometti, 6th Earl of Lovelace and Victor’s closest friend, strode into the room with a firm step.

“Victor!” He said as the only greeting as he sank down in the seat opposite Victor’s. “I highly recommend marriage. Even more so, I recommend children. My son is the most entertaining person I know, and I know myself.”

His smile put that amused twinkle in his green eyes that Victor knew only too well. As usual, he was dressed immaculately in a grey suit and frock, though no matter how well he dressed, the blond curls on his head forever refused to be tamed.

Victor smiled back. He was never able to maintain a bad mood around Christophe, who reached inside the breast pocket of his waistcoat at this moment and took out a small square of paper.

Victor’s smile deepened as he leaned forward in his seat to take it from him. His friend was a great admirer of this new invention called photography and quite frequently had family portraits taken.

“Just look at him,” Christophe told him, an exceedingly proud smile on his lips.

The black and white photograph showed the plumpest little angel Victor, no, the world had probably ever seen. Round cheeks that Victor knew to be a healthy pink in real life, big blue eyes, and a head full of softest blond curls reaching his shoulders now. He had yet to have his first haircut, but neither Christophe nor his wife had the heart to take a pair of scissors to this angelic crown of curls.

“How is my little Sascha?” Victor adored his friend’s son and called quite frequently just to see him, always remembering to bring a treat or a small toy as an addition to his already crammed nursery .

“Delightful.” Christophe placed one hand on his heart. “Truly, Victor, I did not know the life of a husband and father could be this rewarding.”

Like with new technology, Victor knew his friend was also less conventional in other matters of his home life. Despite having been a shameless flirt all throughout their youth and before his betrothal, he was now a faithful husband and a devoted, almost modern father who spent more time on the nursery floor with his son than was considered proper in their circles. Not that Christophe had ever given a damn about conventions.

“Who knows? Perhaps at least marriage is not so far in the future anymore.” Victor smiled wistfully as he handed the photograph back to his friend, who put it safely back in his breast pocket.

Christophe leaned forward in his seat. “The smile on your face tells me you had another letter.”

“I did indeed.” Victor laughed. “Recounting a visit to the Lyceum Theatre. Apparently Mr. Planché’s fairy extravaganzas left him feeling scandalised and blushing. He is endearing, Christophe! I cannot wait to meet him in person and see how quickly _I_ can make him blush!”

They were interrupted by the arrival of one of the club’s waiters and the tea they always took at this time. While they waited for the tea to be poured, they leaned back in their armchairs, looking on in comfortable silence until they were alone again.

“Personally, my friend, I believe letters that do not contain self-composed poetry are not letters of courtship at all.” Christophe poured a generous amount of cream in his tea and leaned back again with the cup on its saucer in his hands.

Victor knew of course all the rumours surrounding his best friend wooing his wife with lewd self-composed poems praising her beauty and especially comparing her bosom to the Swiss mountains in the country of his forefathers. Victor also knew all these rumours to be completely true.

“Not all of us have your talents, dear Christophe.” Victor smiled good-humouredly and added cream and just the smallest bit of sugar to his own cup, stirring well before he brought it to his lips.

“And what was his gift this time?” Christophe asked. The small gifts Victor’s mysterious suitor liked to include with his letters were one of his favourite parts of their conversations.

“Soap.”

They both laughed out loud.

“How thoughtful!” Christophe drank some tea once the laughter subsided. “I suppose it is slightly more subtle than writing you a note saying, ‘Please make sure to take a bath before you face me!’”

Victor wiped a tear of laughter from his eye. “I cannot wait to meet him. Oh, we will have fun.”

“To think that he has seen you while you have never seen him.” Christophe rubbed his chin with two fingers, deep in thought. “He mentions your silver hair and your blue eyes in his letters, and that they… what did he call it? Make his stomach heave with sharp sensations?”

“Very much putting me on the same level as a sickness of the bowels.” Victor laughed again. “His letter writing skills leave something to wish for, admittedly. But they are pure and innocent, and I adore his clumsy attempts at compliments.”

“And he never signs his name?”

“Never.” Victor shook his head. “Darling, is it not?”

“He probably has one of those horrendous old-fashioned names one cannot possibly pronounce, so he is keeping it from you. ”

“I will give him a pet name soon enough if that should be the case,” Victor decided. “We shall see him tonight. I hope we will. You are coming to the Baroness’ dinner party?”

“Indeed I am.” Christophe settled back more comfortably and crossed one leg over the other. “I am still surprised the Baroness has a nephew. I did not know she did.”

“Few people do. I have been able to find out from his letters that he is the son of the Baroness’ sister who lives abroad. He shuns society from what I hear, even though he has been living with her for some time. Methinks he is shy.” Victor’s blue eyes flashed with delight and interest.

“Apparently so.” A wistful smile played around Christophe’s lips. “I hope she is not hiding him because he has a hunch or any other ghastly disfigurement. Why would he be interested in _you_?”

“Because _everyone_ is?” Victor smirked. It was true enough, he was at this point quite possibly the most eligible bachelor in the London aristocracy. Suitors were plenty, and it was not that Victor did disapprove of all of them. More likely his mother did. Many parents had been known to withdraw their marriage proposals after meeting the Baroness Baranovskaya.

“More importantly, why is your mother interested in pursuing this particular marriage proposal?”

“She is probably sick and tired of my being still unmarried and at home all the time,” Victor declared. “I know I would be if I was in her place. Especially now that she has taken on Yura as her ward. One less worry on her mind if someone takes me off her hands.”

“You and your vast estates and riches.” Christophe raised one eyebrow meaningfully.

“The Baroness’ nephew has estates and riches of his own,” Victor replied. “He will not need mine.”

“Ah! Here we have our answer. Estates and riches of his own! Hence your mother’s blessings.”

“It is of no concern. Only a wife’s possessions would come to me by marriage.”

“But it cannot hurt to have them close.” Christophe smiled.

“Which is probably what Mama thinks as well.” Victor raised his tea cup like in a toast.

* * * * * * * 

The Baroness Okukawa, or simply the Baroness, as she was widely referred to, was one of the most illustrious personalities in their circles. Widowed at a young age and with no male family members to force her into a new union, she had withstood all attempts from close friends to get her interested in remarrying. She had loved her late husband a great deal and refused to taint his memory by pledging herself to someone else who would never be able to take his place in her heart and her world. Instead, she had acquainted herself with the running of the family estates and the management of her finances and successfully done so on her own since she had lost her husband. Luckily for her own sanity and peace of mind, the Baroness cared very little about what society thought or said about her.

Her wit and sense of humour worked in her favour and made her held in high regard by most, whereas the slander usually came out of the mouths of those who failed to receive one of the well sought after invitations to her popular evening entertainments. The Baroness liked to open her doors to artists and musicians, so patrons and lovers of the fine arts constantly mingled with those providing them.

Tonight, the doors of several rooms on the ground floor were thrown open and people moved freely to admire the paintings and artefacts of the Baroness’ vast collection, while servants were posted at tables set up in each room, already offering refreshments before dinner would begin.

“Has she spoken about marriage to _you_ yet?” Christophe asked Victor after they had handed their hats, gloves and overcoats to a waiting servant in the entrance hall and moved along into one of the salons to their left, nodding or calling out greetings to friends or acquaintances.

“No.” Victor waved across the room at a former lover, a strained smile on his lips. “Only to Mama. The last time I saw her she claimed men cannot be trusted when it comes to wedding arrangements.”

Christophe laughed. “I have always found the Baroness quite amusing for a woman.”

“My dear friend, I am appalled to hear something so chauvinist from your mouth.” Victor shook his head, but he smiled, barely noticeably. “I have raised you better than that.”

The salon they entered had all the furniture moved towards the silk tapestried walls, leaving a space in the middle that was no doubt meant to serve as a dance floor. The room was humming with voices and laughter, the clinging of glasses. Musicians were tuning their instruments in one corner of the room. Everything was much less restricted than the usual aristocratic events they normally attended. It felt like one was able to breathe.

Victor was nervous. His eyes roamed every room and every person. With every handsome young man his eyes found, his heart would beat faster, but none of them were in the company of the Baroness, as her very shy nephew surely would be.

“Could this be him?” Christophe nodded in the direction of the adjoining room, where the back of their hostess could be seen through the wide open doors, her slim waist looking even slimmer with the way the skirts of her dress widened from the waist down in multiple layers of sheer purple silk, her dark brown hair falling free over her back against every rule of society. She was holding on to the arm of a young man beside her. Nothing much was visible of him but a formal grey evening frock worn over dark trousers, and a head of black hair that had been made to stay down with pomade, even though some unruly strands had escaped and stood up most cheekily.

Unimpressed and sure they would be introduced soon enough, Christophe turned his back on the scene and towards the choice of drinks a young servant had to offer at their end of the room. He really could do with a brandy.

“Christophe.”

“Victor.” He hummed the name good-humouredly, all his focus on the various bottles on display.

“Christophe! He is _beautiful_!”

And Christophe, who had never heard these very words out of his friend’s mouth, especially not uttered with such urgency, forgot about the brandy and turned around.

Victor’s heart was in his throat and the blood pounding in his ears when the Baroness approached them. He could not take his eyes off of the young man on her arm. His evening wear was standard, the ensemble of trousers and waistcoat and frock every man in this room was wearing, only varying in colour and sometimes accessories. But his face was out of this world. High cheekbones and the cutest button nose, full lips and the warmest, softest brown eyes Victor had ever seen. He wore glasses, and his hair was dark as the night, even a little more unruly from close up than it had been from a distance. A shy smile played around his lips when their eyes met.

Christophe nudged Victor pointedly with his elbow and cleared his throat very loudly. Victor blinked. He swallowed thickly, discomfort pooling in his guts when he became aware of how rudely he had snubbed their hostess by paying attention only to the young man by her side. The fact that the way he had been staring at _him_ was on a whole different page of impropriety only added to his feeling unnerved.

“Dear Christophe!” The Baroness reached her gloved hands out to him, and he held them for a moment, a great affection palpable between these two, who were not only longtime acquaintances but also like-minded rebels against society’s strict conventions. “I regret your wife is not with you tonight, she is always such a delight to have around.”

“She begs me send her most heartfelt greetings, dear Baroness, but she is not feeling well.”

The Baroness mustered him with a long, pensive stare, before the faintest enigmatic smile played around her lips. “Make sure to pass on my best wishes for her speedy recovery. I do miss hearing her laughter. And how many times have I told you you must call me Minako?”

“Enough times for me to feel ashamed I still cannot bring myself to do so.” Christophe gave her his most charming smile. “I am afraid I shall lose the last of my inhibitions around you if I start calling you by your name.”

“Please do lose them!” She laughed and withdrew her hands to face Victor.

“Lord Nikiforov. It is always such a pleasure to see you.”

She held out her hand and Victor took it to place a delicate kiss on the back.

“Baroness. The pleasure of being invited back to your house is all mine.” He smiled.

“So charming and well brought-up.”

She turned to the young man who had taken a small step back while she was talking to Christophe and Victor and brought him forward with one hand on his back.

“Lord Nikiforov. May I introduce my nephew? This is Yuuri.”

“Yuuri. What an unusual and beautiful name!” Victor exclaimed.

The dark-haired man blushed, and Victor hid his own delight well. Christophe was less successful, chuckling quietly beside Victor and quickly bringing his hand to his mouth to stifle his amusement behind a fake cough.

“Christophe. You have not met my nephew either.”

“Indeed I have not. You have been hiding him very well from the world.” Christophe smirked.

“Yuuri, this is my dear friend Lord Giacometti.”

“How do you do?” Yuuri murmured and lowered his eyes after a shy nod, blinking behind his glasses.

Christophe turned to face the Baroness, noting right away that he did not stand the slightest chance for Yuuri’s attention next to his friend. “Who knows if I would be married to my wife now, dear Baroness, if I had known you were hiding such a treasure under my very nose.”

Victor’s head whipped round and he shot his friend an irritated glare.

The Baroness laughed. “You would not have that most beautiful and adorable son of yours now had you not married your wife, always remember that. Besides, Yuuri here has quite the mind of his own once he has set his eye on something. Or someone.”

Victor felt warmth flood his whole being and a smile tug on the corners of his mouth. Looking back at Yuuri, he saw that the young man had lowered his head even more, the blush on his cheeks increased. Victor’s heart went out to him.

“Please may I have your permission to speak to Yuuri alone?” he addressed the Baroness. “I fear our friend Christophe may be a little overwhelming.” 

He gave his friend a wink. Christophe answered with an amused smile.

“You may. But Christophe and I will be staying just here, enjoying a drink and keeping you in our sight.” The Baroness laughed. “Trust me, Lord Nikiforov, it is for your own good.”

Yuuri looked up and shot her an angry glare. Victor’s smile deepened. He _was_ delightful!

They moved towards one of the settees placed by the walls, out of the way from people but in well in sight of the Baroness and Christophe, and everyone else for that matter. And in earshot of anyone who happened to walk past or stand close with their drink, as was appropriate.

“Yuuri.”

He looked up when Victor addressed him, brown eyes blinking behind his glasses.

“We meet at last.” Victor smiled what he aimed to be an encouraging smile. “I am glad to be able to thank you in person for your letter and your beautiful gift.”

“It was but a small, silly thing.” Yuuri’s voice was soft, and the faint blush was back in his cheeks. “I do hope you did not find it insulting or too personal.”

“I found it quite pleasant and thoughtful,” Victor assured him.

“Then I am glad.”

They fell quiet, and Victor lowered his eyes, his gaze catching where Yuuri’s hands rested meekly on his thighs. They looked soft and well tended, and he wanted to take one between his and place a kiss on it.

“The theatre was not to your liking, Yuuri?” he asked instead.

There was that blush again, and Victor smiled, not too complacent as he hoped.

“It was… extravagant, for sure.” Yuuri crinkled his nose with disdain.

“Do you not care for the theatre then, Yuuri?”

“I…” When Yuuri looked at him, he seemed shy. “I care more for the opera.”

A change went through Yuuri when he talked about music. Passion broke through the shyness, and his cheeks were very pink again but this time with excitement as he spoke of the Italian operas he had been able to see and what an impression they had left on him. His eyes came alive almost as if small stars were dancing in them, and when he smiled, Victor was sure he had never felt happier in his life than right there at this very moment.

By the time the Baroness and Christophe joined them, Victor was completely smitten. He already knew that the very next morning he would send Georgi out for tickets to the opera.

Later that night, he found himself sharing a carriage home with Christophe.

“Well, I dare say you succeeded at making him blush much faster than I expected.” His friend chuckled quietly in the dark interior of the carriage.

“Faster than I expected myself.” Victor laughed, but there was an excited pink glow on his face too he was glad Christophe would not be able to see. It was bad enough he would be able to guess it was there.

Once they had dropped Christophe off at his house, Victor leaned back in his seat and looked out into the night. He did not see the streets of London or the houses they passed. He saw brown eyes with stars dancing in them, and the smile of a lifetime. He relived the evening in his mind, every glance, every word. Every time his eyes strayed over to Yuuri over the dinner table and every time Yuuri blushed and looked down at his plate. Every time Victor found Yuuri looking at him whenever he turned his way.

Victor had had lovers before, but he had never felt like this.

He felt like he had left the Baroness’ house leaving his heart behind. 

He was in love.

* * * * * * * 

The next morning brought a letter from Yuuri.

Without a gift this time, though when Victor broke the seal and read the words, ignoring the hawk-like stares from his mother across the breakfast table, he felt that the gift was in the words he was reading, and in the fact that for the first time, they were signed with a name.

_Dear Lord Nikiforov,_

_Forgive me for writing so soon after we only just met last night._

_I have not been able to find sleep._

_When first I saw you, I did not find sleep for most part of the night. Now that I have met you and spoken to you, I cannot find sleep at all because of your picture in my mind and your voice in my head and your smile in my heart._

_I merely want you to know that meeting you in person was as enjoyable to me as a night at the opera._

_Yours sincerely_

_Yuuri_

Victor lowered the letter and sighed.

“Vitya! Do not slouch at the breakfast table!” his mother snapped.

Victor sat up and folded the letter back up with utmost care, a dreamy smile on his lips. Not even his mother would be able to ruin his mood today.

* * * * * * * 

Victor had spent the morning handling business with one of their lawyers and bank managers in the city and was worn out by the time he came home. His mother mostly managed their estates ever since his father had passed away but Victor liked to keep up with the books and make sure everything ran smoothly. He found that work also passed the time between Yuuri’s letter in the morning and the moment he next got to see him. There was an invitation to the Baroness’ house up to three times a week these days, and Victor awaited every single one with nervous anticipation and a smile that only waited to burst into a full heart-shape the moment he saw Yuuri.

Victor knew that the Baroness and his mother frequently called on one another these days, trying to come to an agreement. The details took their time shaping up; two self-determined, very smart ladies each with the best interests of the young man in her care at heart would take a lot of time working out an understanding.

Victor and Yuuri enjoyed each other’s presence. They were almost always in company, never alone, though whenever the chance arose that they could steal just a moment for themselves without supervision they would move just the smallest bit closer, and Victor would take Yuuri’s hands and hold them while they spoke, or bring one to his mouth to brush his lips across the soft back of Yuuri’s hand, or even place a kiss in the palm when Yuuri reached out to caress Victor’s face with his fingertips. The gentle teasing by Christophe and the Baroness made Yuuri fluster and Victor smile, and they were very aware they were the talk of the town already, the prospect of their upcoming engagement a hot topic at every societal event.

Yuuri’s letters and gifts were still rather clumsy attempts at displaying affection. Victor still found every single one absolutely delightful and cherished them like treasures that endeared Yuuri even more to him.

His mind was already on the music evening at the Baroness’ when he sat down to tea with his mother.

A small sponge cake sat on the plate in front of him, the sight of the fluffy pale yellow cake with its filling of cream and strawberry jam making his mouth water.

“Cook wants to spoil you like she has always done,” his mother said when he looked at her in question and drank from her tea cup. The sound when she replaced it on the saucer was louder than necessary.

Victor had just lifted his fork to delve into the cake when a voice barked sharply from the door.

“Wait!”

Yakov rushed over to the table and picked up Victor’s plate. He looked it carefully over, turning it this way and that in his hand before he brought it close to his face and took a probing sniff with his nose.

“Allow me to sample that for you.”

Alarmed glances passed back and forth between Victor and his mother across the table. Yakov was their family’s oldest and most trusted manservant. He was almost considered family. Victor’s father had been as close as a friend to him, and he was the only person his mother really trusted to keep Victor safe. He was also the only person among their household staff who was allowed to address them by their names, not their titles. This was how deeply Yakov was ingrained into their lives.

Yakov snatched the fork from Victor’s hand and tried a small piece of the sponge cake.

He clutched his chest and started choking and swaying with dizziness almost immediately. In the commotion that ensued Georgi was sent for the doctor, who arrived in record time like anyone would be with the impending wrath of the Baroness Baranovskaya upon him. The doctor was just in time. He was able to give Yakov something to withdraw the immediate effects of the poison but Yakov was taken to his bed.

As soon as the doctor had left with detailed instructions on how Yakov was to be looked after, Victor’s mother summoned Cook and the rest of the kitchen staff.

“What was in that cake?” she yelled at Cook, every word like whiplash.

“The usual, My Lady, flour, eggs, sugar, our homemade jam… all from our own larder!”

“The flour was newly bought though,” one of the kitchen helps, a young boy, dared pipe up.

“The flour! Where did that come!” Victor’s mother towered over Cook like a hawk over a mouse.

“Our… our usual vendor, My Lady…” The elderly woman, in the family’s services for over twenty years, bowed her head, wringing her hands so hard in front of her body so hard Victor could see she was close to drawing blood with her short nails.

“Mama, stop! Can you not see she is terrified?” Victor intervened.

“As she should be when someone tries to poison my son!” His mother was beside herself.

“My Lady, we would never… we love this boy like our own…” Cook stammered under tears.

Victor’s tense face softened, and he placed one arm around her, glaring at his mother.

“Leave her be, Mama, she would never knowingly harm me.”

Cook shook her head to emphasise his words. Victor felt flooded with affection. Every single time this kind woman had slipped him a treat or made him his favourite dishes ever since he had been a small child stood very vividly before his eyes, and he dismissed the assembled staff despite his mother’s protest.

“You are too soft, Vitya, always have been!” his mother snapped at him. “Just like your father was!”

She stalked from the room and slammed the door hard. Victor exhaled audibly.

He got lost in the Baroness’ house that evening looking for the bathroom, distracted by the afternoon’s events and worn down by worries about Yakov. When he realised he must haven taken a wrong turn somewhere he was just about to turn back when he found himself outside what looked like a library. Victor was able to make out shelves filled with books looking through the small crack the door was left ajar and he paused for a moment as they sight of books always made him do.

“I know you have not been feeling well today but you have work to do.”

That was the Baroness’ voice from inside the room. The strictness in her tone reminded him very much of his mother when she was scolding household staff. They truly had more in common than most people believed, Victor thought. If there was an answer it was so quiet Victor could hear neither a voice nor a reply. The Baroness said a name, something that sounded unfamiliar, “Shorsha” perhaps, and Victor quickly turned on his heel and went back the way he had come from as quietly as possible before he was caught wandering around the Baroness’ house were guests had no place to be.

He was quietly nursing a glass of brandy by a window when he heard the voice behind him that made his heart flutter.

“Lord Nikiforov. Good evening.”

A fierce blush appeared on Yuuri’s face when Victor swung around.

“Good evening, Yuuri.” Victor smiled, his worries suddenly forgotten. “I trust you are well?”

“Very well, thank you. But you look troubled. Is something on your mind?” Yuuri looked concerned.

Victor shook his head. “I just… had a lot of work today. I feel a little tired.”

“You should have rested tonight then instead of going out.” As he said it, Yuuri looked sad.

“And miss your performance?” Victor’s smile grew wide and heart-shaped. “Not for the world.”

He had been looking forward to this evening since he’d come to know that Yuuri took part in the Baroness’ musical salons. Yuuri had been vague about what instrument he was playing, or what he was going to sing, claiming he wanted to surprise Victor.

The music session was opened by the Baroness after a light supper. Various musical instruments had been set up in one corner of the grand salon on a makeshift stage. Victor’s eyes widened with surprise when he saw Yuuri rise from this seat beside the Baroness and walk over to said corner where he took no other seat but the one beside a large Celtic harp. It was taller than Yuuri when he sat and pulled it close towards him.

“I am not the most social of persons…” Yuuri cleared his throat, his face flushing crimson as he spoke to the people assembled in the room. “I prefer to roam the world within the confines of my aunt’s library, which she kindly enough lets me spend as much time in as I could possibly wish. I love reading very much.”

His eyes found Victor’s across the room, a small smile accompanying the admittance of their common passion. Victor returned the smile. Beside him, he caught Christophe and his wife nudging each other, no doubt exchanging smiles about his very obvious affection for the man at the harp across the room. 

“Sometimes the lands I visit in books inspire me to write songs,” Yuuri went on. “This is one of them.”

Something like grim determination settled over his face. He adjusted the harp between his legs, concentration now very obvious on his face as the tip of his tongue showed in the corner of his mouth for a moment when he leaned in with his hands coming round the harp.

Suddenly remembering something, he straightened and looked around the room again.

“Forgive me if my words should offend. It is but poorly written poetry.”

Yuuri started playing, his fingers plucking the strings and bringing forth a slow melody, more like a simple accompaniment to the first verse. His voice when he began to sing enchanted Victor all over again.

_By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young girl calling_

_“Michael, they have taken you away,_

_For you stole Trevelyan's corn,_

_So the young might see the morn._

_Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay.”_

Yuuri barely looked up, half-hooded eyes watching his fingers on the harp strings in concentration.

_Low lie the fields of Athenry_

_Where once we watched the small free birds fly_

_Our love was on the wing_

_We had dreams and songs to sing_

_It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry_

The sad, haunting melody made silence fall over the room. It picked up with the second verse, the harp adding a more colourful background melody to the more powerful lyrics like fairy laughter pearling into the evening.

_By a lonely prison wall, I heard a young man calling_

_“Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free_

_Against the famine and the crown,_

_I rebelled, they ran me down._

_Now you must raise our child with dignity.”_

For one brief moment Yuuri looked up and met Victor’s gaze, but he looked back at the harp again very quickly, missing the sheer onslaught of emotion Victor knew would be playing across his face. It was such a sad story this song was telling, presented by this beautiful man who owned Victor’s whole heart and soul.

_Low lie the fields of Athenry_

_Where once we watched the small free birds fly_

_Our love was on the wing_

_We had dreams and songs to sing_

_It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry_

The music slowed down for the third verse once more, almost as if to wind down the story. Victor felt a sadness weigh on his chest, Yuuri’s song painted such a heartbreaking picture.

_By a lonely harbour wall, she watched the last star fall_

_As the prison ship sailed out against the sky_

_For she'll wait and hope and pray for her love in Botany Bay_

_It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry_

The mention of the prison ships sailing to the new colonies added a whole new level of dread to the song. Victor felt his heart expand, marvelling at the imagination that had made Yuuri write this song, but also wondering why he would choose such a sad topic to write about.

_Low lie the fields of Athenry_

_Where once we watched the small free birds fly_

_Our love was on the wing_

_We had dreams and songs to sing_

_It's so lonely round the fields of Athenry_

The last notes of the harp rang out. For long minutes silence hung over the salon. At last applause set in, bringing a timid blush into Yuuri’s cheeks as he stood up from his seat and took a bow in every direction. He went back to his seat beside the Baroness, searching for Victor’s gaze the moment he sat down. There was such sadness on his face when he locked eyes with Victor that Victor felt his heart was going to break. He only realised Yuuri’s song had left him crying when Christophe discreetly handed him a handkerchief.

* * * * * * * 

Their roles were reversed a few nights later when Victor took Yuuri out to the opera. For the second time, Verdi’s _Nabucco_ was performed in Her Majesty’s Theatre, and Victor had had to pull quite a lot of strings but here he was now in his private box with Yuuri by his side. Right from the beginning Victor could see Yuuri taken in by the performance, and he would repeatedly watch Yuuri from the side rather than the stage. It was during the third act, the famous ‘Va, pensiero’, that Yuuri was shaken by uncontrollable sobs that had people staring and turning their heads from around them. Victor glared at all of them until they quickly averted their eyes. He handed Yuuri his handkerchief and, feeling brave in the darkness, placed his hand over Yuuri’s that was resting on Yuuri’s knee. He curled his fingers tight around Yuuri’s fingers and felt him calm down under his touch.

Victor leaned over until his mouth was close to Yuuri’s ear and he could hope to be heard despite the music.

“Would you like to leave?”

Pressing Victor’s handkerchief to his eyes, Yuuri nodded. They quietly made their way out, followed by one of the Baroness’ servants she had sent along as a chaperone.

While they waited for their carriage to be fetched, Victor pulled Yuuri behind one of the pillars in the theatre entrance where they could be a little out of the way and out of sight.

“I am sorry,” Yuuri started, trying to catch his breath and stopping the sobs. “This song always makes me so sad. ‘ _Oh mia Patria sì bella e perduta!_ ’”

“‘ _Oh my country, so beautiful and lost!_ ’” Victor translated. “It is very heartbreaking indeed.”

“Please forgive me. I have made quite a spectacle of myself, and of you.” Yuuri dabbed at his eyes.

“There is nothing to forgive. To be moved by art is one of the most beautiful trades in any human being, in my opinion.”

“You are not angry? Not repulsed?” Yuuri looked at him, tears still clinging to his lashes.

Victor shook his head. “No. I am merely heavy of heart that I should have been the one who caused these tears by taking you here. I should be the one asking you for forgiveness.”

Yuuri looked at him for a long moment.

“Yuuri.” Regardless of the Baroness’ manservant watching them closely, Victor reached for Yuuri’s hands and held them tight in his own, raised between their bodies, close to their beating hearts.

“I know my mother and your aunt have near come to agreement. But I would like to hear it from you. I do not wish to be one of those people whose future is decided at a desk in a study. I have made my deep feelings for you very clear, I believe, and from your letters…”

Yuuri was looking at him, all quiet and serene, but his cheeks were glowing bright pink.

“Yuuri. Dare I hope…” Victor pressed Yuuri’s hands more firmly. “Have we come to an understanding?”

Yuuri’s brown eyes filled with tears all over again.

“Yes, Victor,” he said softly. “Yes, we have.”

That night Victor found no sleep, thinking again and again with a blissful smile on his face that for the first time, and how brave of him before they were even officially betrothed, Yuuri had called him _Victor_.

The next morning, Victor burst into the salon where his mother still sat at the breakfast table.

“Mama! Announce the engagement!”

* * * * * * * 

Yakov was confined to his bed for all of two weeks until the doctor allowed him to get up and back to his duties. Victor and his mother were going over papers in the study when a voice from the door startled them.

“Lilia!”

Yakov closed the door behind him and came over to the huge wooden desk, his eyes firmly on Victor’s mother. “Tell him,” he said determinedly.

Her expression turned harsh. “Yakov. We would not. To keep him safe.”

“That was before I nearly got poisoned. We need to do something, and Vitya needs to know. We cannot keep him safe otherwise.”

“What do I need to know?” Victor looked back and forth between the two of them.

His mother hesitated a little while longer, but the look Yakov gave her finally made her falter. She reached for a thin golden chain around her neck on which she carried the key to the desk drawer in which she kept confidential papers. She always carried that key on her. Unlocking and opening it, she took out what looked like letters. Another look went from her to Yakov, but he only looked at her grimly.

Very slowly, she handed Victor the letters across the desk.

“These are threats,” he said soberly after studying them. “To my life.”

Both his mother and Yakov nodded.

“How long have you been receiving these?” Victor felt anger rising inside him.

“It started several weeks ago,” his mother said, without regret.

“Weeks!” Victor exclaimed. “Why was I not informed of this?? Does this mean the attack in the streets… the poisoned cake… _you knew_ these were intended attacks on my life!”

“I was trying to protect you,” his mother replied crisply.

“By not telling me I am in danger?! This is ludicrous, Mama! Have you spoken to the authorities? Do we have any suspects?” Victor threw the letters on the table. The writing was all capital letters, giving not the slightest bit of indication as to who might have written them.

“Vitya!” Yakov sounded strained. “We think it has to do with your estates in Ireland.”

“Why?” Victor narrowed his eyes.

“The people there are angry. The famine hit them hard, even though we looked after them as much as we could.” Victor’s mother sighed.

“We did, I saw the books,” Victor agreed. “So you think one of our tenants over there is after my life.”

“There are a lot of rebels coming over here now who are angry after what happened. We always treated them fair, but they have always been ungrateful. Some have been caught and put on the ships, small blessings.”

“Mama!” Victor glared at her. “They have been struggling for their very lives!”

“Vitya,” Yakov said patiently. “We are keeping a close eye on you. While I was out Otabek was watching over every step you took. We just need you to be careful. I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

“How do you suppose to do this?” Victor’s blue eyes were cold as ice. “My wedding is coming up! Mama invited half of London! How are you and Otabek going to make sure nothing will happen?”

“You will have to trust us,” Yakov said. No more. “Trust _me_.”

Victor looked at the both of them for a long moment.

“Stop treating me like a child!” he finally said, in that tone that sounded soft but had the steel of a newly wielded blade underneath it. “I demand to be informed immediately if another of these threats comes and of everything you find out. Is that understood?”

His mother looked ready to burst with anger but she reigned it in. Victor could see how she was boiling with rage. He did not care. Once at least Yakov had the decency to nod, Victor stormed from the room with a couple of quick strides, closing the door quietly behind him.

* * * * * * * 

A ball was held by Victor’s mother two weeks before their wedding. Victor did not tell anyone about the fall he had taken that morning when his horse took a fright during their usual ride at dawn. He had been able to reign the steed in very quickly, and he almost had not hurt himself. Yuuri, however, noticed that something was off when Victor winced painfully during one of their dances.

“Are you not well, Victor?” he asked when the dance move brought them close together. His eyes widened with concern. They moved apart again with the next move.

“My horse got a bit of a fright this morning, that is all,” Victor replied when they next came close.

“Did it throw you off?” Yuuri gasped, stopping in the middle of the dance floor.

“No, my heart.” Victor had taken to calling him all kinds of endearments since the day they were betrothed. He was not friends with Christophe for nothing, and his friend’s deviation from what society thought proper proved way too much fun when it came to calling Yuuri whatever his heart desired.

Victor brought his arm around Yuuri’s shoulder und ushered him off the dance floor so that they wouldn’t be a hindrance to the other dancing couples. He led him through the crowd until he found a quiet nook in the ballroom wall behind a curtain where he already had liked to hide when he was a child.

Cushions were placed on the low wall and they sat down, Victor’s arm still around Yuuri’s shoulder, although it was clear that the movement of lifting his arm caused Victor’s shoulder pain.

Yuuri’s eyes filled with tears when Victor winced again. Victor felt like his heart was going to break, and he lowered his arm from Yuuri’s shoulder and reached for Yuuri’s hands on impulse instead. He pressed Yuuri’s fingers close to his lips.

“Yuuri, my love, I promise you, I am being very careful.” Another kiss on soft, soft hands.

They sat for the longest time with their heads bent close together, until Yakov looked around the curtain and, at the sight of them being inappropriately close, cleared his throat very loudly so that they sprang apart.

Yuuri felt reluctant to leave the ball that night. Almost as if he wanted to stay with Victor and never let him out of his sight again.

“Very soon, my Yuuri!” Victor assured him as he saw him off by the carriage. “Very soon you will not have to leave again.” Another kiss was pressed into the palm of Yuuri’s hand through the carriage window.

He stood and looked after the carriage long after it was around the corner and out of sight.

“Vitya.” Yakov’s voice made Victor jump

“Yakov.” Victor smiled at him, but it looked tired and troubled. His shoulder ached, but even more so his heart at the memory of Yuuri’s face. He could not bear to see Yuuri worried.

“Whoever is after you might be after _him_ too. Remember this the next time you hide where we cannot see you!”

Victor’s face fell. “I had not thought of that…” he admitted.

“Because you are a fool in love,” Yakov scolded.

“Yakov!” Victor looked up, his expression stern. “Yuuri must be kept safe! I expect you to take all necessary measures! Speak to the Baroness’ household if necessary, find some confidants there. Until the wedding and Yuuri living safely here with us, he must be protected. Whoever is after my life, they must never know that the quickest way to end it would be if any harm came to Yuuri.”

The next day, only a couple of hours later really, brought another letter with a gift from Yuuri. He had included a polished oval stone of green marble, flat on one side, concave on the other. The letter gave an explanation.

_This is a Worry Stone._

_Rub the hollow with your thumb and the marble will absorb your worries._

Victor lowered the letter and shook his head. Darling Yuuri, he thought. This stone would not help to disperse the dread weighing on Victor’s chest, but the thought that Yuuri even considered it possible was very charming.

* * * * * * * 

Their wedding was a grand affair, as was to be expected when one of the most prestigious heirs of society and the most eligible bachelor got married, but Victor had eyes for Yuuri alone. Much to their distress Minako, as Victor was calling her now, had fallen ill recently and was not well enough to attend their wedding. Victor knew it caused Yuuri great sadness not to have his aunt near on this day, and the tried to make up for it by paying extra attention to Yuuri and always keeping close by his side.

There was, of course, another reason for his staying close to Yuuri at all times. Victor was very aware of Yakov and Otabek and so many others keeping a close eye on their guests. Posts had been placed at every door to prevent uninvited guests from entering.

And Victor knew he should be joyful on this the happiest day of his life, but he knew he would only be able to relax when all the festivities were over and he was able to close the door on the world. The ever present tension rarely loosened its tight grip on him, making it hard to truly enjoy the occasion.

He found his greatest happiness when he looked at Yuuri.

During one of their countless dances, he could not quite help himself and murmured to Yuuri, “I cannot wait for tonight, for you to be wholly mine.”

Yuuri blushed violently.

But the next time they were brought close together in dance, Yuuri managed to whisper in his ear, “Neither can I, Victor.”

The words brought the happiest and most genuine smile of his wedding day to Victor’s face.

The moment he closed the bedroom door behind himself and Yuuri, Victor felt the weight of the world fall off his shoulders. They were here, safe, nothing had happened. Most importantly, they were married now.

Yuuri was his.

The bedroom had been prepared with countless candles by his household staff. Baths had been drawn for the both of them in the dressing room right outside Victor’s bedroom but they quietly agreed that they were tired and would rather be alone.

When their eyes met, the few steps between them became too wide. They rushed towards each other to breach the distance, and their mouths met in kisses fuelled by the longing of many weeks. They undressed each other with eager fingers until they were only in their shirts, letting their clothes drop carelessly to the bedroom floor. Victor asked even though he knew the answer, and then, at last, he took Yuuri to bed.

Yuuri’s beauty would be forever ingrained on his mind and his heart, Victor knew, as he lay on his back, Yuuri rising above him with his knees straddling Victor’s hips, hot skin and aroused bodies already touching where their shirts rode high. Yuuri had taken off his glasses, his eyes looking down at Victor so full of need that it caused Victor pain both in his heart and in his cock. To think that any moment now this beautiful man would be his! He watched, surprised, how Yuuri pulled a small necklace, no, a leather band out of his shirt and over his head. He briefly caught sight of the pendant attached to the leather band. A ring, perhaps? Yuuri closed his fingers around the necklace and brought it to his lips for a moment, breathed a kiss on the pendant in his palm before he leaned over to put it very gently on the beside table where his glasses already sat. Then he looked down at Victor, already moving his hips against him in such a tantalising manner that Victor ran both his hands under the hem of Yuuri’s shirt to caress his hips, his stomach, dared to brush perky nipples with his fingertips and draw a low moan from Yuuri’s mouth.

It happened so fast that for years to come Victor would still remember every detail.

One moment Yuuri was leaning over him, a smile of such love and devotion on his face that Victor felt his very being soar with pride and joy that this beautiful man was his. His heart ran away with him, full of anticipation as Yuuri leaned down for a kiss, resting his weight on his hands left and right of the pillow beside Victor’s face.

The next moment Yuuri’s arm shot up above his head and the blade of the knife caught the moonlight.

Victor felt the prick of pain at the side of his neck where the blade broke a little skin because he was not fast enough in pushing Yuuri off, rolling out of bed and jumping to his feet.

“You!”

His voice was a shout. His chest heaving frantically. Blood pounding in his ears. The cut on his throat stinging. They stared at each other across the bed they had shared only a moment ago.

Victor felt his heart, his soul, his whole world plummet with dread. Bewilderment. And then, realisation.

“ _You_ are the one trying to kill me?!” His frantic breathing was loud in the room.

On the other side of the bed, in the light of their wedding night candles, Yuuri’s mouth turned into a pain-laced smile.

“Yes.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning! This chapter deals with the Irish potato famine (The Great Famine) of 1845-1849, a catastrophe during which about a million people in Ireland died and another million immigrated. This chapter mentions the death of original characters through starvation in the past, including that of small children!
> 
> ... you might want to grab some tissues for this one.

**Chapter 2**

“Why?”

They were staring at each other across the bed in the candle light.

“You took something very precious from me.” Yuuri took a breath that sounded painful. “Now I’m going to take something precious from you.”

Victor’s eyes narrowed, his survival instincts raging so strong now he almost forgot who was facing him.

“Who are you?” Victor pressed the collar of his shirt against his neck, though it only added to the sting of the cut. He winced.

“I am one of those who worked your lands. I grew and harvested the vegetables that were served on your table. And then I became one of those who rebelled and were meant to be on the ships.” Yuuri smirked at that latter part because he so clearly was not.

Victor felt cold dread prickle at his spine. The prison ships her Majesty sent criminals to the new colonies on. But this was Yuuri, his soft and shy Yuuri, even now looking beautiful and emotional and defiant. How was this possible?

“Why are you not?” Victor asked. “On the ships?

“Because I have unfinished business here.”

“I am your unfinished business?”

Yuuri laughed, and Victor’s heart ached, for he so loved Yuuri’s laughter, and he realised he had barely heard it before. “Indeed you are. Luckily you did not make us wait too long, just like Minako said.”

It dawned on Victor then that, of course, Yuuri had had help. One did not just escape the ships and disappear and emerge a different person. A nephew hidden from the world who suddenly showed his face to society. A mysterious suitor who never signed his name.

“Minako’s going to hang for this,” Victor hissed.

Yuuri laughed again but it sounded hollow. “Minako is long gone. She left the country on a ship a week ago. Why did you think my aunt was too ill to attend our wedding that she took so much care initiating and preparing?”

Victor’s eyes widened the more Yuuri talked. He had dropped his refined aristocratic speech completely now and was talking with the soft, rounded musical lilt of the... 

“Irish!” Victor uttered, stunned. “You are... _how?”_

He took a cautious step towards the lower end of his bed. Across from him, Yuuri mirrored the action. Their eyes never left each other, like hunter and prey. Something hummed between them, not audible to the human ear but very much to them, connecting and pulling them like invisible thread.

“I practised very hard. I disguised well. All this time you never noticed that the one after your life was me.”

“And here I thought you wanted my life for a whole different purpose.”

Victor saw the emotion flitting across Yuuri’s face at his words, saw the brief reminder of what he had believed was love up until now.

Victor took another step towards the end of the bed and slowly around it. Yuuri did the same on his side.

“I cannot believe this…” Victor muttered quietly under his breath. Scanning the room quickly with his eyes, he could see that Yuuri’s hands were empty and the knife lay too far out of reach.

They circled each other around the room, tension rising high and crackling, their eyes always locked. 

“Cannot believe what? That you married the enemy?” Yuuri asked. “There is no such law that says one cannot find their enemy attractive.”

“I do not consider you my enemy,” Victor said. “I am not that kind of English person.”

“The English hate us!”

“Not all of them!”

They paused in their tracks, staring at each other, breathing heavily.

“Yuuri…” Victor said gently. “I do not hate you. You know me.”

Something akin to longing flashed across Yuuri’s face, and Victor knew, underneath all this, his Yuuri was still there. Not all of it had been an act. Moments later, the mask was back in place.

“You love me,” Victor reminded him.

“How can I love someone who destroyed my life?” Yuuri snapped.

“How can I have destroyed your life when I did not even know you?”

Yuuri snorted. “Indeed. You do not know.”

“Then give me an explanation!” Victor felt anger take hold of him.

They were moving again, eyeing each other wearily like big cats waiting to pounce.

“You are very handsome, I will give you that,” Yuuri said.

“For someone who claims to be my sworn enemy you quite enjoyed our kisses.”

“I can enjoy your kisses and still dislike you.”

“Not three hours ago you told me you cannot wait to be alone with me.”

“For different reasons than your own, as you now know.”

“This is not what your body tells me.”

Victor looked pointedly down, where arousal was tenting Yuuri’s shirt. A wicked grin spread over Victor’s face. He could feel Yuuri’s eyes wandering down his body too, where he knew he would be able to spot a similar reaction. The rough cotton rubbing over the sensitive head of his cock was beginning to drive him crazy.

He stepped closer and Yuuri stepped back.

Victor felt Yuuri’s eyes, on his mouth. On his cock. He saw Yuuri licking his lips.

Adrenaline surged through him and he felt so alive, so aware of the fact that he just very narrowly escaped death. He felt vibrant, the blood singing in his veins. Everything was so much more intense, every sense heightened. 

Victor took another step.

Yuuri’s back hit the wall.

Their eyes met and the world paused for a moment. The sparks dancing between them flickered into a flame and then burst into a blaze that fed on their mutual hunger.

Yuuri was the one with the wall in his back but he pulled Victor close by the front of his shirt and crushed their mouths together.

“I despise you!” Yuuri hissed and kissed him hard again, forcing his tongue between his lips and groaning in Victor’s mouth when he kissed him back with the same passion.

“And yet you tremble in my arms like you have longed for my touch and cannot believe you finally feel it.” Victor smiled when Yuuri looked caught for a moment.

Every emotion that hung heavy over this room erupted between them in frantic kisses and heated touches, tongues battling and hands groping with need and hunger. They did not bother taking their shirts off, just pushed them out of the way. Victor reached blindly for the phial of oil that had been left out for tonight. His wedding night, he thought bitterly for one moment before anger clouded his mind again. The man he had been planning on making sweetest love to all night was wrapping his legs around him right now and pulling him closer where he pounded him into the wall, stroking him inside out with slippery fingers and feeling how his body opened up to him and demanded more.

Yuuri’s head was thrown back against the wall and he was panting heavily, watching Victor from hooded eyes. His moans of discomfort soon turned into pleasure and he was chasing Victor’s touch with frantic rocking of his hips, while his mouth muttered breathless obscenities.

He moaned with frustration when Victor withdrew his fingers and reached for the oil again. As he coated his cock generously he felt Yuuri watching him, caught the tilt of his Yuuri’s head from the corner of his eye.

“Would you have me stop?” Victor asked, his voice thick with lust and fury, and he did not have the slightest idea how he would be able to convince his body of taking a step back now.

Yuuri glared at him, full of rage. “Finish what you started!” he rasped out.

Victor pushed inside him in one long thrust that made both of them moan out loud from the sensation of the sudden fullness and tightness as they ceased being two people and became one. It was fierce and eager, giving in to those parts of them what wanted to be close, ignoring the ones that wanted to flee from each other as fast as they possibly could.

Yuuri’s eyes fluttered open and he smiled at Victor in a way that sent shivers down his spine.

“Fuck me harder, Lord Nikiforov! After all, is this not what you people do best? Conquering and ruling? Using what we have to give? Showing the clueless Irish what is good for them?”

Rage took over Victor’s body and mind at Yuuri’s taunting words, and he fucked him harder into the wall. He did not miss the absolute bliss on Yuuri’s face and the smile that looked like victory. He was a puzzle to Victor, every single piece a mystery and yet he yearned with his whole being to put it together.

Yuuri claimed he hated him but he was so tight that Victor knew for a fact he had never been had by a man before. He claimed he despised him and yet he moaned so wantonly and pulled him closer with every thrust as if Victor’s cock inside him was the best he had ever felt. Was he even aware of the way he was crying out his name, Victor’s name? Like Victor was his path to salvation? Was he aware that he was clinging to Victor like a drowning man only Victor could rescue?

They pulled apart the moment they finished, as if the closeness that hadn’t been close enough a moment ago was suddenly too much. Victor stumbled away, feeling like a veil was clearing in his mind leaving the words “What have I done?” behind.

Yuuri remained standing, leaning against the wall with his shirt dropped back down to the middle of his thighs from being bunched up around his waist. He was frantically gasping for air, but he was smiling with his eyes closed. Victor watched him from the ottoman across the room he had slumped down on.

“Was anything true?” Victor asked when he felt he could trust his voice again. “Of all the things you said to me… was anything true?”

Yuuri opened his eyes. He looked at Victor for a long moment, sweat glistening on his chest where the front of his shirt dipped in a low V.

“Minako is not my aunt,” he said finally. “She is a friend, and a great supporter of our cause. She made me her legal heir when I insisted she leave the country. I did not want her in danger if my plan failed.”

“Your plan to kill me.” Victor stated it calmly. Yuuri nodded.

“You still have not told me why. We did not know each other. If you are indeed one of the rebels they are looking for, you cannot have been one of my tenants. My tenants, they… they would not.”

An ugly sound tore from Yuuri’s throat. “When was the last time you saw your estates?” he asked. “The famine started years ago. I do not remember seeing you there asking how your tenants are faring.”

Victor could not think of a reply. He really had left it too long. But the books had looked fine.

“What did you do that earned you a place on the ships?”

Yuuri laughed. It was a hollow, ugly sound. “I stole food.”

“Stealing food does not get you sent to the prison colonies. What else did you do?” Victor’s voice was adamant.

“I killed a man.” Yuuri met his gaze straight on.

Victor took a deep breath. “Assuming you had a good reason… what else was true?”

He might as well pick up the knife from where it lay on the carpet and drive it into his own heart, Victor knew it, but he had to know. If he ever wanted this feeling of being trapped in a nightmare to stop, he had to know.

“My love of the opera is true. Of music. My love of books. I did spend most of my time in Minako’s library.”

“That song you sang… at the music evening.”

“I did write that. I have been writing poetry since I knew how to hold a pencil.” Yuuri gave a short laugh. Their eyes met in the candlelit room. 

Victor’s eyes widened.

“You did not think a lowly paddy could write.”

“That is not what…” Victor started but Yuuri cut him off.

“For a man who has such a vivid interest in the arts and a library full of legends from all over the world, this seems to me a very small-minded. You people will never be able to crush the folklore of my country under the heels of your shoes, no matter how hard you try. You may break our spirit and take our language and our faith from us but you will never take our legends, our songs, our soul.”

“You write poetry. You wrote the words to that song. Yet the letters you wrote to me…”

Yuuri started laughing. “Mindless flattery. Quite an effort to come up with such silly declarations of love. It amused and appalled me alike to write them. Nothing compared to the love letters I would normally have written.”

A memory flared up. It cut Victor’s heart but he felt he needed to, needed to cut Yuuri right out of his heart if he could. “To the woman in the song… Mary?”

“That would have been her English name.” He said it like an insult, “English name.” Yuuri raising his voice came as another surprise to Victor, but this was clearly a very sensitive subject. “Her name was Máire.” He pronounced it _Maw-r_ a.

Victor cleared his throat. “She was… your sweetheart?”

“She _was_ my _wife_!” Yuuri yelled. 

_The grass was dancing to the tune of the wind. Lonely sheep clouds trawled here and there across a vast light blue sky. Sunlight kissed the countless shades of green as far as the eye could see, licking up every trace of the downpour that had washed the land clean not too long ago._

_A young man’s laughter rang out across the fields as he leapt over a low wall and ran faster, lured by the promises made by sea blue eyes peeking out at him from behind a thin tree trunk that was more an excuse than a hiding place. The wind was whipping his hair into his face, thick black tresses coming down below the frayed collar of his shirt and falling into his face. They stung his eyes if he didn’t push them away quickly enough. He never did._

_Ahead of him a large rectangular tower loomed, and he slowed down, smirking, stepping closer in lazy strides because this barrier was far too strong for his prey to escape. His hand caught the hem of rough cotton and a lithe body turned around in his embrace under softest laughter, knocking a little air out of his lungs as he broke their fall, landing on his back in the soft wet grass._

_The air was cooler in the shadows of the castle walls. He rolled them over so that he came to lay on top, breathing faster as he looked down at the bright blue eyes that held his whole world in them. He saw his own brown eyes reflected in them, a mirror of love that had been eternal already before it began. For such were the legends of their land. Such was the run of the rivers. Such were the songs of their soul._

_Freckles dotted the sweetest pale face, and he kissed every single one of them now. He kissed the heart-shaped mouth, dark hair falling into his face as he bent down his head._

_The young man’s cheeks were tinged with the pink from running, and from the wind lashing at his face, and from the bliss of holding his greatest happiness in his arms._

_This was his land._

_His love._

_His life._

_“Seoirse.” The young woman’s voice was sweet, like fairies’ laughter._

_The sunlight caught in the ring on her finger as she raised one hand to caress his face. He had worked so hard for this ring. So many days he had spent away from her, straining his body beyond endurance, keeping his head lowered as he accepted English bastards’ snobbish mockery._

_It was only the weakest kind of gold, but it was hers. An eternal Celtic pattern was engraved into the slim golden band, representing the endlessness of their love and their legends. The small aquamarine the colour of her eyes that sat in the centre had been a gift from Minako._

_He placed his own rough hand on top of hers. It was torn and calloused, remnants of dirt under his nails that he never seemed to get rid of completely no matter how hard he scrubbed. The sight made him feel ashamed. But she wound her hand from under his and placed sweetest kisses all over his hard-working hand, until all his shame was gone. Then she guided his hand with hers and placed it on her belly._

_Realisation took a moment coming, then it transformed his face with wonder. This was their dream. Their life, a century-long cycle. Small feet that would dance with her by the river. Small hands that would help him in the fields. Small minds they would fill with knowledge and spirit and fairytales._

_“Máire…” he breathed. “Is it true?”_

_She nodded, her blue eyes dancing with joy and that enigmatic shimmer that only impending motherhood can put into a woman’s eyes._

_And his doe brown eyes teared over with happiness as he lowered his head to kiss her again._

Victor looked at Yuuri across the room. The light was dimmer now, as some of the candles had burnt down and gone out. He was glad for it, for tears were burning in his eyes after what Yuuri had told him.

“There was a child…” Victor almost whispered the words.

“Our babe… she was small.” A weak smile came to Yuuri’s lips, but his breath was ragged, like sobs wanted to rattle him. “Máire already had gone hungry too long while she was carrying her. We named her Emer, after our greatest hero’s companion. Such a big name for such a small thing.”

He brought up his sleeve to his face to wipe it over his eyes. “She was the sweetest little girl. Máire’s blue eyes. And so much dark hair. We had such a short time together. I stole the corn then to feed my family and was caught.”

His eyes seemed locked on some faraway place, like he was somewhere else completely, forgetting about Victor’s presence. Suddenly he smiled again, a small smile of loving pride. “She was headstrong, my Máire. They would not let her see me, where they held me captive, so she found a window where she was able to talk to me.”

Victor couldn’t help but smile too although it pained him greatly. No other person than someone so dedicated and loving deemed him worthy of Yuuri.

“She sold her ring to the English, for food.” Yuuri turned his head and let his gaze wander towards the bedside table.

“But…” Victor’s eyes followed where Yuuri had placed the ring he wore on the simple leather band around his neck. Before. “How did this ring come to be in your possession?”

Yuuri’s chuckle was dark. 

“The English lord who captured me. She sold it to him. At first I thought he…” He closed his eyes, pain ghosting over his face. “I thought he had touched her. He could read my mind. Told me he would never lay a hand on a dirty, verminous paddy whore. He was taunting me with the ring, the most precious gift I was able to give her. He called it cheap. I slit his throat. They took me away straight to England then, but one of his Irish servants found and hid the ring, and made sure it got to Minako somehow. She gave it back to me.”

He looked directly at Victor again.

“I was meant to be on that prison ship. Except I never got to Botany Bay. I escaped. Hid in some disgusting hovel by the harbour until I was able to contact Minako. She took me in and made a gentleman out of me. The care she has taken of my hands alone! All those oils and ointments, weeks of transforming my rough farmer’s hands into a gentleman’s.”

He huffed.

His hands, Victor thought. Those soft, gentle hands, the nails manicured into perfect half moons. How tender these hands felt when he placed his lips against them in the chastest of kisses. 

And suddenly Victor felt like a curtain was pulled and he was able to see more clearly than ever before in his life.

“The prisoner who stole the corn… the harbour walls… the prison ship…” Victor almost whispered. His head whipped up, eyes wide as he looked at Yuuri. “This is _your_ story. The song tells _your_ story.”

Yuuri huffed again, clearly mocking him for taking so long to figure it out.

“You are the one they were hunting. The thief who escaped. And you mocked the people who were searching for you all over by singing this very story at a music evening right under their very noses!” 

Yuuri gave him a triumphant smile across the room. 

“That is…” Victor exhaled. “Quite brilliant.” 

How he wished his heart wouldn’t beat so fast with respect and admiration and something so much deeper in his chest right now. Under different circumstances, he would have laughed now. He would have felt so proud of the man he had chosen. 

“Under Minako’s protection I was able to travel back home.” Yuuri’s voice was quiet. Hopeless. “I went to find my wife, my child.”

“And…” Victor found he was choked and cleared his throat. “Did you find them?”

A sob cut into his voice as Yuuri struggled the words from his hoarse throat. 

“I was too late. They were dead. Starved! I buried them with my own hands by the river’s edge where she loved to dance.”

He wiped his eyes and nose on the sleeve of his shirt. In the light of the last candles Yuuri’s eyes flashed all his hatred at Victor. 

“This is what you took from me. And this is why you need to die. You took from me what I loved the most, and now I’m going to take the same from you!”

“I don’t understand...” Victor shook his head. He felt great despair. “I did decree that no food was to be taken from my estates in Ireland before the people there were fed! I was told they were adequately supplied!”

“They weren’t!” Yuuri yelled. “They died! They all died. Old people. Children. They starved while you people were having your dances and your salons!”

Silence pressed down on them, crept through the room between them like poisonous fog that made their eyes burn and their throats clog with too much sorrow, too many emotions, too much.

Yuuri was the first to speak again.

“Give me to the authorities. The ships or the gallows, I do not care.” He slid down on the wall, powerless, hugging his knees to his chest. 

“Yuuri...” Victor started, but the expression on Yuuri’s face made him fall silent.

“You took my life from me the day my family died. I care nothing for this.” Yuuri gestured at the ostentatious bedroom with a sneer. “I care nothing for _you_.”

The last candle flickered and went out, and silence wrapped around them like the dark, quenching time and space. Nobody could have said how much time had passed until Victor’s voice came from the darkness.

“But I for you.”

* * * * * * *

Victor’s mother was reading in the breakfast salon the next morning when Victor threw open the double winged door with both hands and stormed into the room. He ignored her scandalised gaze as he yanked the newspaper from her hands and threw it carelessly on a nearby chair.

“The key, Mama!” he demanded, his eyes blue steel. “I want the key to the drawer where you keep your confidential papers!”

“I think not, Vitya!” Her voice and gaze were cold as ice. “You will apologise immediately for your inappropriate behaviour! This is no way to talk to your mother!”

“Now, Mama, or I swear I will yank the necklace you keep it on from your throat with my own hands!” He was seething with anger.

She probably would have put up a fight if Yakov had not stepped in, holding her back with a calm “Lilia.”

Shooting daggers from her eyes, she pulled the necklace on which she carried she key with her very slowly from her neck and over her head. Victor didn’t wait or thank her, he ripped the chain from her hand immediately and hurried to the study. His mother and Yakov followed, but Victor’s fury gave him a head start.

In the study, he unlocked the drawer and took out all the papers he could find in it. He put them on the desk and started reading quickly, scanning the pages and throwing them aside when they didn’t show what he was looking for. His heart all but stopped in his chest when he came across the accounts of their estates in Ireland. They looked uncannily like their books he always checked so meticulously and yet, there was something wrong about them.

The figures were much too high.

The amount of produce extracted from their estates was way too much. Victor went over the numbers quickly in his head, how many tenants they had there, how much food they would have needed, exactly how much that would have left. The number at the bottom of this page should have been much lower. Victor frantically went through the next couple of pages, went back over the past couple of months, all the way over the past two years when the famine had been at its peak. Victor began to feel sick.

“You left them to starve.” His voice was barely audible as he swung around, knowing his mother was watching him from the door. “I told you not to do this, not to take anything from them unless they were fed. I told you to send what they needed if the need arose. There is nothing about that in here!”

“We did not have anything to spare…” she started but recoiled when she saw his face.

“We have _everything,_ Mother!” He knew he was shouting but he could not help himself. “Too much, even!”

She flinched briefly at the formal address, then her expression hardened, but Victor was already bent over her desk again, studying more of the papers he had drawn from the desk.

He went very still and stared for the longest time at a drawn out map. It seemed familiar and yet all new, and it took Victor a moment to understand that he was looking at a map of Ireland, his own estates marked very clearly. But next to them, doubling the area marked as his estates and making almost the whole west of Ireland his, was more land. Land that was most certainly not his, but…

He swung around towards his mother. “This is Yuuri’s land. What is this map?”

She huffed. “Our joined estates, you can see that, Vitya!”

“This is nonsense.” Victor turned back towards the papers on the desk. “Yuuri is not a woman, his possessions do not come to me by marriage, only by—”

The words died on Victor’s lips and he sank down on the heavy leather chair in front of the desk because his legs suddenly gave way under him.

“Only by inheritance,” he whispered. “Only if something were to happen to Yuuri.”

“You know best how quickly accidents can happen.” His mother’s voice was so calm it made Victor shudder. “An attack in the streets… a horse throwing you off… a poisoned piece of cake…”

“Lilia!” Yakov’s voice resounded through the room like a gunshot.

“You would use the attacks on my life as inspiration to harm Yuuri?” Victor looked up. His head felt so heavy the movement was a great effort. He had spent the night in a guest room, crushed by guilt because of the wrong that had been done to Yuuri. A small part of him had clung to the hope that Yuuri had it wrong, even though in his heart of hearts Victor knew that Yuuri’s story was very true, his pain very real.

“You were planning on having my husband killed so you could acquire his land and riches!”

She did not reply. It was all the answer Victor needed.

Finding that his own mother was responsible for Yuuri’s terrible loss made the guilt weighing him down quite unbearable. But this. This was about to crush him.

If he let it.

“You are a monster.” Victor’s eyes narrowed. “I want you to leave this house and never come near me or Yuuri again.”

“Vitya, you cannot be serious.”

“I am, Mother. You will retreat to our estates up north where you can do no harm and remain there.”

“You _cannot_ be serious! Our land up there is a swamp. It is a cold and heartless place!”

Victor gave her a long, painful look. “It is the perfect place for you then.”

He collected the papers he had spread across the desk into a neat pile.

“I do not deserve this, Vitya.” Her voice still sounded clipped, but he could see that the firm mask of her face began to crumble.

“Indeed you do not. You do not deserve this much mercy. I should hand you over to the authorities right away.” Victor picked up the pile of documents. “I will hand over these should you make the smallest attempt at meddling in my life again. I was a fool to trust the handling of all our businesses to you, but this ends now.”

“You are too weak to handle the business on your own!” she hissed. “Just like—”

“My father, I know! You have said so many times. You must have truly despised him, taking back your maiden name before he was even cold in his grave.” Victor looked disgusted.

“I am sick of your deceit and your cruelty, Mother. Once word of this gets out, and I cannot guarantee it will not for you know how people talk, you will lose your standing and your place in society.”

“You would not dare!”

“I sure would, after everything you have done! You have willingly left people to die! Children!”

“Everyone in our circles has.”

“ _We_ are not everyone!” Victor shouted. “Was this not how you raised me?”

They stared each other down, raw pain and disappointment and defiance battling for dominance.

“I am taking Yura with me.” Her eyes flashed with determination.

“Yura stays here!” Victor snapped. “He will be _my_ ward now! Yakov will go with you, to make sure you stay there and do not hurt anyone ever again.”

Victor turned to face the old manservant. So did his mother.

“Yakov! Tell him he is being impossible.”

“No, Lilia. You are the one being impossible here,” Yakov said quietly.

She froze for a moment. For the first time since Victor could remember his mother looked vulnerable. Almost soft.

“You dare side with him? Abandon me?” She turned on Yakov, rearing up like a wounded bird about to peck, but Yakov stood his ground.

Victor looked on in fascination. The transformation in his mother was unbelievable to him. She seemed to shrink and fold in on herself. She had met Victor’s decision with defiance, but Yakov’s betrayal crushed her.

Victor strode towards the door, in his arms all the papers that would bring his mother to fall.

“You will leave tomorrow, Mother. I suggest you start packing.”

Once Otabek was instructed not to let Victor’s mother out of his sight, Victor confided in Yakov.

The man was frantic with worry and angry with himself for having been so tricked but Victor held him back from storming into his bedroom and wringing Yuuri’s neck.

“No.” Victor shook his head. “Enough suffering has come to him from this house. I want to make amends.”

Yakov frowned, but he nodded, a low gruff sound coming from his mouth.

“I need to speak to someone. Sort out some things. Will you watch over Yuuri for me?”

One of Yakov’s eyebrows came up, a threat on its own.

“Yakov.” Victor beseeched him. “I trust you with my life. Please watch over Yuuri for me. Do not let her anywhere near him.”

Something in the old man’s expression made him pause.

“You _love_ her,” Victor said quietly.

Yakov gave no reply.

A small smile came to Victor’s lips. “I have always suspected you shared my mother’s bed.”

“I have never!” Yakov barked. In the dim light of the hallway, the faint hint of a blush was easy to miss. “Your father was my friend! I would never have betrayed his trust like this!”

“But you love her.” Victor felt a constriction in his throat all of a sudden. “This is why you stood by calmly and let her get away with so many things. And this is why she trusted you. She believed your love for her would let her keep all her dirty secrets.”

“But not anymore,” Yakov said. “I was loyal to your father first. I promised him that your wellbeing would always come first. She harmed you. I will go to the north with her and watch her, but I will never forgive her for this.”

Victor hurried along the hallway, knowing Yakov would not want to see Victor pity him.

* * * * * * *

Christophe was in his dressing gown, playing horse all around the nursery floor with his son on his back when the butler appeared in the door and cleared his throat.

“Lord Nikiforov is calling, Sir.”

Christoph let the boy slide very carefully down his shoulder and caught him in his arms.

“See him in. He will meet me in here, you know him.”

“Very well.” The butler withdrew with a nod.

Moments later Victor stepped through the nursery door, carrying what looked like a packet of documents tied with string under his arm.

“My friend!” Christophe greeted him jovially. “Up already? I would have thought your alluring new husband would have kept you in bed a little long— Victor! What happened?”

His face instantly sobered when he saw Victor’s expression.

Victor slumped down on the floor opposite Christoph and placed the documents carefully by his side. He never concerned himself much with etiquette around his friend. And Christophe might have been a barrister and an aristocrat the moment he left the house but in here, he was as much of a child as the one he crawled around on the floor with.

The 7th Earl of Lovelace was currently hitting a stuffed bear on the head with a wooden spoon. At the sight of Victor he paused and burst into a big toothy grin.

A sad smile played around Victor’s lips. “I swear the mere presence of this child can cure all the woes of the world.”

Christophe chuckled. “I am quite fond of him myself.”

“And now tell me what brings you here when you should be in bed enjoying your wedded bliss.”

Without saying a word, Victor unwound his necktie and turned his neck towards his friend.

Christophe hissed when he saw the gash.

“Christophe. I am going to tell you quite an unbelievable story now.”

By the time Victor finished, Christophe had wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his dressing gown, hugged his son to his chest, and placed one hand on Victor’s upper arm for support, all of these several times.

They did not talk, just watched the little boy at play for a while, until Victor spoke again.

“He had a child, Christophe. A child who would be about the same age now as your Sascha.”

Hearing the name by which only Victor ever called him, the little boy stopped throwing wooden building blocks about the floor and turned towards him. Despite his sadness, Victor had to smile; it was a natural reaction. The boy walked up to Victor on his sturdy legs and placed a small hand on his cheeks and then wrapped his pudgy arms around Victor’s neck.

“We hug people who look sad now, that is his latest accomplishment,” Christophe said.

“You son’s timing is impeccable.” Holding on to the small warm body, Victor looked at Christophe over the soft blond curls cuddled against his throat, tears glistening in his eyes.

“What will you do?” Christophe asked when his son walked to the other end of the room fetching a ball that suddenly struck his interest.

Victor sighed. “A great wrong was done to Yuuri, by my fault. What can I do?”

“Not yours. Your mother’s,” Christophe reminded him.

“It is still my responsibility.” Victor reached for the pile of papers he had brought and handed them over to his friend. “I will need you to keep these safe for me. This is all the evidence against my mother I have been able to gather. Should she ever attempt to cause trouble again, I will not hesitate to hand these over. Until then I would like to entrust them to you.”

“Of course.” Christophe took the documents with a nod. “What about Yuuri?”

Victor lowered his head. “I have thought about this…” He sighed. “He may not like it.”

* * * * * * *

Yuuri woke up cramped and cold, having fallen asleep curled into a ball on the floor of Victor’s bedroom at some point in the night after Victor had left him, announcing he would stay the night in one of their guest rooms. It was the insistent knocking of a young maidservant that woke him, and he looked up, squinting, when she barged into the room after no answer came.

“So you are alive,” she announced at the sight of him. For a moment Yuuri was reminded very much of the women back home, red hair and hands on hips and that very same feisty tone.

“Lord Nikiforov said you ought to have a bath and some ointment for you might be sore. Not that we did not all hear it last night.”

Yuuri blushed crimson. He curled his legs under his body, trying to cover himself with the shirt that was still the only item of clothing he wore.

She came back from pulling open the curtains and looked at him.

“Will you get in the bath now or not?”

“No.” Yuuri looked up at her defiantly. He would get dressed and run from this house the moment she left him.

“Fine. If you don’t, _I am_ going to wash you and put ointment on all your delicate places, and you will not like this because I do not have an ounce of gentleness or patience in me.”

Yuuri decided that it would be better to rise and get in the bath then.

Once he was dressed in clothes the girl brought over from his own trunks he found himself back in Victor’s bedroom. A tray of food had been set out for him but he pushed it away.

“You might as well eat it, we do not poison people here.”

The gruff voice from the door made him look up. He almost laughed when Yakov stepped further into the room.

“I see I am being guarded.” Yuuri retreated to the other end of the room, looking out the window.

“For your own good,” Yakov said.

Yuuri said nothing. He felt too much.

He had failed. He had failed Minako, and Máire, and his little girl who had not lived to see her second birthday, and all the people back home whose pointless deaths he had wanted to avenge. Everything had been in vain. Worse even, he had betrayed his Máire in so many ways. Pressing her wedding ring against his lips he felt the tears forcing their way from his eyes. How heavy his heart was. Far too heavy for a heart that had stopped beating a long time ago.

They were phantom pains for sure, those he felt in his heart here and now. Faint echoes of an old love, and crushing shame. The shame burnt him in so many places, not just the ones where he felt tender and aching for another man’s touch.

He had spread his legs for him and moaned his name like a wanton whore, and he despised himself for the pleasure he had felt, for how much he had wanted to be Victor’s and, worse, wanted to be his still. It could never be, and yet. There was a connection between them that Yuuri did not want but felt very strongly, and it tore him apart like two hearts were beating in his chest and they were both yanking him off in opposite directions. 

Crushing guilt forced Yuuri down on his knees by the window and he started praying for forgiveness.

Some time in the afternoon there was a commotion outside the bedroom door. A voice that sounded very young demanded entry quite adamantly. Yakov had left Yuuri on his own a while ago but made it very clear that every attempt at escape would lead nowhere as he had his people positioned at every window and every exit from the room. He was just outside in the dressing room, hurrying in after the long-limbed young man who came bursting through the door now.

Yuuri jumped to his feet and moved across the room to a more open space. Whoever this person was, Yuuri was not going to meet them when huddled in a corner. 

“So this is one who nearly slit Victor’s throat!” He was still a boy

“Yura! Be quiet! Nobody is supposed to know! How do _you_ know?”

The boy looked at Yakov over his shoulder and laughed. “Nobody in this house ever pays me any attention. You never look around when you speak. So many times you would find me hiding just around the corner.”

“You were eavesdropping again!”

“I was practising secrecy,” the boy replied, bored. “Unlike you.”

“Get away from him!” Yakov barked as the boy stepped up to Yuuri.

Yuuri instinctively balled his hands into fists and took on a defensive stance as the boy started to walk around him. He supposed that this was the ward he had heard Victor mention, the boy his mother had taken in to be his guardian. Yuuri had never seen him face to face before, but this gave him a chance to take a good look at him now, take in the delicate features and flashing green eyes under shoulder-length blond hair.

“Do not be like this!” The boy sneered at him before he burst into a big smile. “I am not going to do anything to you. I am impressed. My name is also Yuri. And I want to know how you did it!”

Victor returned in the late afternoon. Much to Yuuri’s surprise, there was no policeman with him, no authority to have him taken away. Instead, Victor had a new tray of food brought that was placed on a small table he asked Georgi to set up at the foot of the bed.

“Eat, Yuuri,” Victor said when they were alone. “I have been informed you have not touched any food all day.”

Yuuri merely shot him a glare from where he was sitting on the edge of the bed.

Victor sighed and walked over to the bed. He stayed on the other side of the small table as he sat down on the edge and reached for a piece of bread from the tray.

“Do you believe we would poison you like you tried to poison me?” he asked, keeping his voice as neutral as possible.

After a while of watching Victor eat, Yuuri moved further down on the bed until he could reach the table and grab some cheese and bread.

Victor repressed a smile. It was easy, because all too sudden melancholy overcame him once more.

“So,” he began while they quietly shared the food. “Is your name Yuuri at all?”

Yuuri lowered the apple he had been about the bite into. “It is. Well. Kind of. My name… my actual name, is Seoirse.”

Victor’s eyes widened with recognition.

“I heard Minako call you that,” he said. “The night of the music performance, I… got lost looking for the bathroom and chanced upon a library.”

“So it was you.” Yuuri looked at him across the small distance. 

“You knew I was outside?” 

Yuuri huffed quietly. “People get loud when they try to be extra quiet. Besides…” He blushed a little as if the memory embarrassed him. “Your perfume lingered in the hallway when we left the library.”

“I did not hear your voice replying back to her. But she said your name. Sho…” Victor frowned, and fell quiet.

“Shor-sha,” Yuuri said. “It’s Irish for George. And George--”

“Is Yuri,” Victor finished for him.

“I did not want to attend the music salon that night.” Yuuri looked at the apple in his lap. “It was my wedding day.”

Victor felt it like a physical cut. Not _their_ wedding day. Yuuri had had another.

“I have loved you from the moment our eyes met the first time,” Victor said, wistfully.

Yuuri looked up. Their eyes locked. “I have hated myself from the moment our eyes met the first time.”

The unspoken hung in the air between them.

_Because I, too, have loved you from the moment our eyes met the first time._

Victor rose from where he sat on the bed and walked around it until he was right in front of Yuuri. He crouched down, took the apple from Yuuri hands and placed it on the bed before he took Yuuri’s hands in his like he had done so many times before. He looked up and saw those brown eyes looking back at him, the sad defiance in them, and he tried to reign in the frantic beating of his heart.

“I have no words that could possibly express how deeply I regret what has happened to you. What you have suffered, due to faults of my own. I should have controlled my mother. I should have taken better care of you, of… my people. Everything.”

Victor swallowed thickly.

“And I cannot give you back what was taken from you. But I can give you freedom and the protection of my name. You are free to go, if you choose. I believe Minako left you her house as well as all her belongings. Or you are free to stay, if you so choose. You will have your own rooms, your own life. We may not always be able to avoid one another but you would be mostly unbothered. I know you care nothing for my love, but that, too, is yours.”

Then he rose to his feet and walked slowly towards the door. He paused without turning when he heard Yuuri’s voice.

“You may burn my silly letters.”

“Why would I do such a thing?” Victor turned around to look at him. “The words remind me of how I once felt loved by you. Even though they were untrue.”

He left the room without a sound.

* * * * * * *

Yuuri stayed. He had nowhere else to go. Nobody who was waiting for him. And for some reason, he found a strange comfort in the fact that Yura frequently sought his company. They would spend hours together in the library, reading volumes on history and culture, debating back and forth. Yura wanted to hear stories from Yuuri’s home. He wanted to hear about Yuuri’s rebel days. Yuuri indulged him. Sometimes Yura even made him laugh.

Sometimes Yuuri could still sense a lingering remnant of Victor’s perfume in the library. He wasn’t aware of the way Yura rolled his eyes at him when he noticed him falter and allow the smallest dreams to chase through his mind for just one moment.

* * * * * * *

“Teach me your language,” Yura said to him one night.

Yuuri blinked behind his glasses. “My language?”

“Yes. Your Irish. I want you to teach me.”

Yuuri looked down at the book in his lap for a moment, then back up.

“It is forbidden,” he said quietly, while his eyes said something else.

Yura’s eyes signalled a reply. “I know,” he said, his smile wide and wicked.

* * * * * * *

“What does this mean?”

Yuuri looked up at the book Yura was holding out to him across the table in the study. They had started meeting up for their lessons here whenever Victor was not working, facing each other across the desk as Yura practised reading and writing or they conversed in Irish.

“Anam Cara,” Yuuri said after a look at the page and handed the book back to Yura. “Soul mate.”

Yura hummed noncommittally and went back to his reading.

“This is you,” he said after some time.

Yuuri looked up from his book and across the table.

“You and Victor. It says here, that a person without a soul mate is like a body without a head. Mind you, in your case I would say without a heart. Soul friends read each other’s hearts. This is you and Victor.”

“No,” Yuuri said, and hated how he blushed.

“Yes,” Yura insisted. “The both of you have been haunting this house like… soulless creatures, for months. The only time this mood lifts is when you are in the same room together, when you speak sometimes. Not that you ever say anything of significance to each other than polite nonsense. But it is like… something in you recognises something in him whenever he is around you, and the other way round.”

“I already loved once,” Yuuri said quietly and reached instinctively for the ring on the leather band around his neck, closing his fingers around it over his shirt.

“I have found nothing in all your Irish mythology that says you cannot love more than once.” Yura leaned forward across the table. “Would she want you to be alone and sad for the rest of your life?”

Yuuri swallowed hard. His eyes were burning with unshed tears. Already he found it hard to remember all the details. Another pair of sea blue eyes kept wedging its way in.

“All I found is this.” Yura tapped his fingers loudly on the book he still held in his hands. “This is you and Victor. And you are both idiots.”

* * * * * * *

Yuuri found Victor in the library. He was sitting in one of the armchairs, a wad of paper spread across his lap. Letters, Yuuri realized, and felt his heart speed up. His letters. Victor was reading Yuuri’s letters. The hand that was not holding a sheet of paper was propped up on the armrest. And Yuuri felt his stomach plummet when he saw that in the hand propped up on the armrest, Victor held a very familiar looking oval stone of green Connemara marble, absentmindedly rubbing the hollow with his thumb. 

“They were badly written words on purpose.”

Victor looked up when he heard Yuuri’s voice from the doorway.

“But they were never untrue.”

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

**Epilogue**

The grass was dancing to the tune of the wind. Lonely sheep clouds trawled here and there across a vast light blue sky. Sunlight kissed the countless shades of green as far as the eye could see, licking up every trace of the downpour that had washed the land clean not too long ago.

A young man was kneeling by the river’s edge, carefully digging a hole in the ground. Above him, a Celtic cross rose like a guardian to keep this place sacred, keep it safe.

Two names were carved into the stone.

Máire.

Emer.

The man brought two handfuls of earth closer to his face and breathed in deeply. Tears started to fall onto the brown clumps. So long. It had been so long since his hands had felt the cool dampness of this soil, since his nose had smelt the musty scent of home. Of his land.

The slim golden band was cool to the touch of his lips when he placed a kiss onto it and whispered a prayer in the old, forbidden language before he lowered the ring deep into the ground and heaped earth on top of it, patted it down until it was firm and even. He remained for a while, kneeling in silent conversation. 

The silver-haired man waited patiently, letting the wind whip his hair about as he watched his love mourn his wife and child from a small distance. His heart sat heavy in his chest, still touched by grief he desperately wanted to take away and knew he never could. He could only try to rebuild. He had already begun. He knew he would come here tomorrow and every single day of his life to place a blue rose on the grave and say a quiet prayer of regret and gratitude. And to make a promise to cherish and honour the love he was allowed only because this grave existed by the river’s edge.

The dark-haired man rose from his knees and walked up to where the other was waiting. He slipped his hand in his, and sea blue eyes looked back at him, filled with tears of compassion for the love that had been lost and would always be woven into the tapestry of their story. The younger man looked up into the bright blue eyes that held his whole new world in them. A smile formed on both their faces.

Their fingers laced tightly together as they started walking together towards home. Dim lights were falling through the small windows of the cottage that was their home until the castle was restored to former glory. The works had already begun, new stories already been set in motion. New dreams were dreamed. New promises whispered from a heart-shaped mouth.

Soon their steps were synchronised like one. Their hearts beat the same beat. Gratefulness threatened to burst the dark-haired man’s chest. That he should be allowed to find love again after having lost it once so painfully. That he should feel forgiveness. That his land should be allowed a glimpse of hope, of freedom. That his heart should be allowed to beat again, brought back to life by another pair of sea blue eyes. He saw his own brown eyes reflected in them, a mirror of a love that had been eternal already before it began.

For such were the legends of their land. Such was the run of the rivers.

Such were the songs of their soul.

**~ The End ~**


End file.
